Failed Heroes of the Left: Tony Blair

I know neighbour of Tony Blair, that was invited to tea at his house. My friend is not interested in politics, but his quick impression many years ago was that "Tony Blair is just interested in what's in it for him". I personally will never forget the video of his final appearance at this Sedgwick constituency, where after waiting years for him to do something for them, his constituents, the working class supporters, were discarded with as much care as a used tissue paper.

Well, several years down the road and Blair still has 5 teams of police protecting all his mansions at our expense, and the true extent of his and Cherie's fortunes are known, and even the dumb left are feeing betrayed. ______________________________________________________________________________________

Tony Blair's fortune boosted £13m by 'bumper year'

Newly published accounts show former PM Tony Blair's business interests around the world are booming, according to a City accountant

Tony Blair has taken to flying around the world in a £30 million private jet which he charters on a regular basisPhoto: ANDREW CROWLEY FOR THE TELEGRAPH

Tony Blair has more than £13 million deposited in the bank following his most commercially successful year since quitting Downing Street.

The latest accounts for a network of companies used to run his growing business empire show Mr Blair’s business interests around the world are booming. Profits at one company alone, which he owns, totalled almost £2 million while shareholder funds on two businesses total £7 million.

The accounts, for the 12 months to April 2013 and which were lodged at Companies House last week, give the best indication yet of Mr Blair’s earning power. His wealth, including a London townhouse, a country estate and several other properties, is estimated at £70 million.

The latest accounts do not give a full picture of Mr Blair’s assets but suggest he has had a “bumper” year, according to one City accountant who has analysed the figures.

Mr Blair administers his commercial empire through a complex series of companies and partnerships, headed by two businesses – Windrush Ventures Limited and Firerush Ventures Limited. The companies were set up by the former prime minister when he left office.

Through the companies, Mr Blair runs his global consultancies. It is understood that Windrush Ventures channels money for Mr Blair’s Government Advisory Practice, which advises national and regional governments on how to implement policies and reforms in a model based on his time in Downing Street.

Firerush Ventures administers the funding for Mr Blair and his team’s work advising companies and sovereign wealth funds. Both firms operate under the umbrella of Tony Blair Associates.

The fullest picture comes from the accounts for Windrush Ventures Limited, which show it enjoyed a turnover of £14.9 million for the 12 months to April 1 2013 and a profit after tax of almost £2 million, a rise of £650,000 on the previous year. Cash in the bank and “in hand” totals £8.8 million, up from £1.5 million the previous year.

Windrush employs 35 people and has a total wage bill of close to £3 million, almost £1 million more than last year.

Mr Blair’s staff earn an average of £86,000, while the company’s highest paid director receives £273,000. That director is thought to be either Catherine Rimmer, Mr Blair’s chief of staff and a former Downing Street aide, or else David Lyon, a former Barclays investment banker who was recruited by Mr Blair in 2012 to “grow and develop” Mr Blair’s business activities.

The accounts show that Windrush paid corporation tax on its profits of £653,000. Although the company generated turnover of almost £15 million, it paid tax on only a fraction of that because £12.1 million was paid out in expenses, to cover the cost of office rents, travel and hotel bills for Mr Blair and his team. The tax was paid out – quite legitimately – on only the company’s profits.

Accounts for another of Mr Blair’s linked companies, called Windrush Ventures No1 Limited, disclose that Mr Blair lent his own company £1.24 million in 2012 at a commercial rate of 5.5 per cent. The accounts show Mr Blair was repaid the loan in December 2012 “with applicable loan interest”. It is not clear why Mr Blair lent his own company the money but he earned interest on the deal of £75,000 in the course of the year.

Firerush Ventures Limited also enjoyed a bumper year. It is a smaller company than Windrush and as a consequence is not required by law to give as much detail about the state of its finances.

But the accounts show cash at the bank and in hand totalling £4.6 million, up from £1.2 million the previous year, and shareholder funds worth £1.6 million. The two companies between them had cash of £13.4 million and shareholder funds worth £7 million. Mr Blair is the ultimate owner of the businesses.

Mr Blair has earned a fortune since leaving office and has taken to flying around the world in a £30 million private jet which he charters on a regular basis.

He is an official adviser to JP Morgan, the investment bank, and to Zurich International, the Swiss-based global insurance company. But he and his team also advise wealthy governments such as oil and gas-rich Kazakhstan, presided over by its autocratic ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev. That deal, worth millions of pounds, has attracted criticism.

Mr Blair also has deals with mineral-rich Mongolia, with governments in Latin America and also in the Gulf states of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi. He is a regular visitor to China and the US and can earn as much as £250,000 a time for private speeches and appearances.

Mr Blair insists he does not make as much money as he could because he uses his profits from his commercial dealings to fund his philanthropic activities. He runs two global charities – a faith foundation and a not-for-profit organisation advising African governments – whose accounts are filed separately.

One City accountant, who has studied Mr Blair’s accounts, said: “These numbers are a big improvement on last year. Mr Blair has had a very good year. This is a bumper year – his best year yet.”

In a statement on his website, The Office of Tony Blair said: “These are the financial statements of the two companies through which the operating costs of the Tony Blair group’s global activities are paid. They do not represent his earnings or the earnings or the profit of his businesses and are not referable to them.”

The statement explains that Windrush is holding a surplus “for reinvestment in expanding the business”. The statement went on: “As a smaller company Firerush only publishes abbreviated accounts. It is a company that is solely for administering the costs of the business.

“The £1.5 million surplus for the financial year therefore represents the running costs and money retained for reinvestment in the business; on which corporation tax is paid.

“Full corporation tax is paid by all the businesses. The money made by Mr Blair from the Windrush and Firerush businesses is not published in these accounts; it is though, subject to full personal income tax. Mr Blair continues to be a UK taxpayer and pays full personal tax on all his earnings worldwide.”

Replies to This Discussion

Small wonder that Blair and his cronies never did the one thing that would have benefited the working class and dealt with the whole issue of offshore banking and other tax avoidance, leaving us to pay the shortfall .. and of course he could have brought in firm and sensible controls on the banking and financial industries (and immigration for that matter).

Tony Blair says a "toxic mix" of religion and politics has created the situation

"Even if you'd left Saddam in place in 2003, then when 2011 happened - and you had the Arab revolutions going through Tunisia and Libya and Yemen and Bahrain and Egypt and Syria - you would have still had a major problem in Iraq.

"Indeed, you can see what happens when you leave the dictator in place, as has happened with Assad now. The problems don't go away," he said.

The last of Britain's troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011 after eight years.

'Bonkers assertions'

Mr Johnson's comments came as the Iraqi government claimed to have "regained the initiative" against an offensive by Sunni rebels led by ISIS - the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

Extremists captured key cities, including Mosul and Tikrit, last week, but several towns have now been retaken from the rebels.

Writing in his weekly column, the Mayor of London said he has "come to the conclusion that Tony Blair has finally gone mad".

He writes: "The Iraq war was a tragic mistake; and by refusing to accept this, Blair is now undermining the very cause he advocates - the possibility of serious and effective intervention.

"Blair's argument (if that is the word for his chain of bonkers assertions) is that we were right in 2003, and that we would be right to intervene again.

"Many rightly recoil from that logic. It is surely obvious that the 2003 invasion was a misbegotten folly."

He later writes: "Somebody needs to get on to Tony Blair and tell him to put a sock in it - or at least to accept the reality of the disaster he helped to engender. Then he might be worth hearing."

But Labour MP Kevin Brennan said the mayor of London, when he was an MP, had backed military action in Iraq.

"I seem to recall when many of us were voting against war in Iraq in 2003, Boris Johnson was in the other division lobby in the Commons," he tweeted.

'Proxy debate'

Speaking on Monday, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the turmoil in Iraq should not be used as an opportunity for a "proxy debate about Tony Blair and everything he has ever said and done".

Asked in the Commons by the SNP's Angus Robertson whether Mr Blair should resign from his role as a Middle East peace envoy, Mr Hague said this would "not be helpful".

Earlier on Monday, Mr Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "entirely possible" to argue that "it was the right thing to remove Saddam Hussein but that mistakes were made in the aftermath of that".

He added: "Of course, it is possible to argue that Western intervention makes these problems worse and it is possible to argue the absence of Western intervention makes these things worse.

"Foreign policy is the fine judgement between those things. I think the truth about intervention is that it is only right when it is a last resort and where it either has limited objectives or it has a very comprehensive plan working with regional and local leaders to go with it."

Blair is a true socialist and collectivist and interventionist. He is part of the group of kids at school that were too sloppy for the disciplined proofs of maths and science, yet too empty of any creativity to do arts - so they just bummed off into social science and politics, where they could escape being categorically proven to be wrong / an idiot. Lacking artistic ability, they still craved power and recognition, with the consequences we see all around us. Perhaps that's why they say "Politics is show business for ugly people", and it means ugly in the sense of lacking any redeeming qualities of physical beauty or intelligence or wisdom or grace.

So, as von Mises demonstrates countless times, government intervention in the economy just makes people poorer. But the leftist response to the failure of these welfare interventions to reduce poverty is that we should just do it even more.

And a more conciliatory and understanding attitude to criminals, instead of harsh punishments, has lead us to a lawless and dangerous society, unrecognisable from the safe Britain that some of us grew up in 50 years ago. Yet, the answer to that problem is not that the "understanding and tolerance" of criminals hasn't worked, but that we need to do it even more.

And now, with Blair's intervention in Iraq having unleashed a chain of events which is leading to Armageddon in that country, Blair tells us that the reason for that failure is that we didn't intervene enough, and that we should also have intervened in Libya, Syria, etc.

What a useless tosser. If the police guard we pay for was withdrawn, he wouldn't even be able to walk down any hight street in this country. As Boris Johnson says, its paper bag on head time.

‘Tell us who pays you’: Tony Blair pressured over alleged paymasters

Published time: January 19, 2015 16:27

Tony Blair (AFP Photo/ Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

Conservative MPs will launch a campaign on Monday to force Tony Blair to reveal how much he earns and who pays him.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is tabling an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the House of Commons, demanding that former prime ministers be bound by the same rules of transparency and oversight as serving politicians.

While the EDM is unlikely to be passed by parliament, it follows growing concern over Blair’s work for authoritarian governments and controversial corporations.

Blair’s business transactions have been linked to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – all three of which are widely known for their human rights abuses.

“Tony Blair has embarked on a career of personal enrichment and has blurred the lines between his public and private interests,” Bridgen told The Sunday Times.

“No other former prime minister has gone to work for other sovereign states. Mr Blair is still in public life, but is not bound by its principles, and that needs to be changed,” he added.

Blair, who was last year awarded GQ’s Philanthropy Award, has come under intense scrutiny as he has been linked to a string of authoritarian regimes and less-than-ethical companies.

A consortium of energy companies, including BP, hired him last year to work on a new gas pipeline which will go from Azerbaijan to Italy via Turkey.

The project has come under fierce criticism for the environment destruction it may cause and for the wealth it will give Azerjaijan’s controversial leader, Ilham Aliyev.

Nazarbayev’s government has been accused of human rights abuses after its courts forcibly closed much of the country’s independent media and his troops massacred dozens of striking oil workers at a peaceful protest in Zhanaozen, in western Kazakhstan, in December 2011.

As if the list of unscrupulous customers wasn’t long enough already, Tony Blair Associates has also been linked to a Saudi Arabian oil company founded by the son of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

A leaked contract, which emerged last November, showed that Blair had been hired by PetroSaudi to help facilitate a deal between the oil firm and Chinese state officials.

"Daughter Kathryn Blair used to live in a small house bought for her for £975,000 in 2010, but after being mugged outside the flat she moved into a mews property next to her brother Euan’s marital home, a grand £5 million six-story townhouse."

There you have it. After damaging the social fabric of the UK, the Blair family feel some consequences. No matter, just plonk down a few million to segregate their children off from the masses as well, and they're good to go again.

Sorry, all i know is what is in that article. I wanted to say:
"Tony Blairs family also got to experience having their nose rubbed in diversity, and didnt enjoy it at all"
but without knowing the full story, i had to be more general.

Monitor this Page

Muslim Terrorism Count

Mission Overview

Most Western societies are based on Secular Democracy, which itself is based on the concept that the open marketplace of ideas leads to the optimum government. Whilst that model has been very successful, it has defects. The 4 Freedoms address 4 of the principal vulnerabilities, and gives corrections to them.

At the moment, one of the main actors exploiting these defects, is Islam, so this site pays particular attention to that threat.

Islam, operating at the micro and macro levels, is unstoppable by individuals, hence: "It takes a nation to protect the nation". There is not enough time to fight all its attacks, nor to read them nor even to record them. So the members of 4F try to curate a representative subset of these events.

We hope that free nations will wake up to stop the threat, and force the separation of (Islamic) Church and State. This will also allow moderate Muslims to escape from their totalitarian political system.

The 4 Freedoms

These 4 freedoms are designed to close 4 vulnerabilities in Secular Democracy, by making them SP or Self-Protecting (see Hobbes's first law of nature). But Democracy also requires - in addition to the standard divisions of Executive, Legislature & Judiciary - a fourth body, Protector of the Open Society (POS), to monitor all its vulnerabilities (see also Popper). 1. SP Freedom of SpeechAny speech is allowed - except that advocating the end of these freedoms2. SP Freedom of ElectionAny party is allowed - except one advocating the end of these freedoms3. SP Freedom from Voter ImportationImmigration is allowed -except where that changes the political demography (this is electoral fraud)4. SP Freedom from Debt
The Central Bank is allowed to create debt - except where that debt burden can pass across a generation (25 years).

An additional Freedom from Religion is deducible if the law is applied equally to everyone:

Religious and cultural activities are exempt from legal oversight except where they intrude into the public sphere (Res Publica)"